(Has a bug where it is now unplayable, crashing upon opening a recruit and pressing refresh, and removing the ability to purchase minions once restarted so you MUST fight without minions)
So I'll explain what I liked, then some bugs, then the things I think must be changed. I have way more to say as criticism but it's only to improve the experience and whatever was somewhat annoying was overshadowed by the game being fun. SUMMARY AT THE BOTTOM!
What I liked:
The beginning was difficult and the characters were all interesting at first. I could tell some characters were made to hard-counter others. Beyond some initial confusion due to my poor ability to understand things I'd say the game was a perfect experience at first and had me playing all the way till this review.
The difficulty was what made me immersed since mistakes put you in danger of failure, and I love this sort of feeling because it's a thrill to fight for your life through budgeting, planning, and caution and still fail (if you just make bad decisions).
Bugs:
After the first few hours, the game will crash every 40 seconds if you are not in combat. Wasn't that bad since it's easy to get invested in the game because of the initial difficulty, but every time it closed the options for my turn would be changed, and sometimes cripple my run for a while, making me waste hundreds of saved gold (since bought monsters would disappear if I dont get into a fight within those 40 seconds.)
2. Some elite battles showed the heroes of different regions, meaning no matter how many times I repeated a region-specific boss in elite battles, I would consistently get the same boss from another region.
3. One elite unit had the wrong appearance? I think it was the elite unit that increases the big robot-building gauge upon it's death... (Rather than being a robot it was just a green orc until it died -every encounter)
Constructive Criticism:
1. Lacks a bit of content for an $11 game but for the 9 hours it took for me to beat the campaign it was really fun and the difficulty was somewhat present. I can see myself replaying when I have nothing to do, and would likely recommend to friends to watch how they play. I wish the fights were harder, some abyss cards were nerfed, and that it was less predictable with bosses and there more variables -hopefully cruel- (though I have yet to try what seems to be the new game+)
2. PLEASE prevent cards from stacking entirely because on my 7th run I just got an abyss starter hero, bought a juggernaut, went to the abyss spell archive, and then casually completed the game with my starter hero at 500+ health and 80 attack + 50 defence because I could stack a sacrifice spell (which only sacrificed my juggernaut minion ONCE instead of what should've happened...) And I didn't even need to use my world-ending starter hero. I just got duplicates of the most overpowered sacrifice spells and one-shotted my way through everything and if a tough enemy was introduced, I could casually stall with juggernauts until it is easier to one-shot them.
3. My 1 juggernaut minion spamming "mutilate" with their high health meant the enemy will be stuck dealing no damage, taking no damage, allowing me to place overpowered terrain effects (but additionally the AI will force it to swap minions every time to remove that damage debuff which then INSTANTLY kills them because juggernaut can spam an unlimited amount of terrain stuff.)
Yes, 1 juggernaut nearly beat the game until the superior enemies arrived, which then were defeated by them swapping out, and me adding multiple juggernauts.
4. Everything was pretty predictable after a few runs and there was really no more variety... also minimal danger once past the beginning few fights until the end-game which makes it feel more like a farming simulator until I get to see new enemies (only the elites).
Only obstacles my best run faced:
Basically, 4 juggernauts would beat the game until a few rare enemies are met, but my guys would just be stalling while my hero siphons 500 or more health from them all as they technically stunlock enemies into swapping forever, forcing them to take 200 or more damage every turn via swapping out.
With my hero, the only danger was one enemy out of dozens that could purify buffs gained... countered by just spamming juggernaut skills so if they ever arrive they either get one-shot or instantly die by swapping.
(Enemies would not get the chance to clear the field unless I purposefully allowed them, and even when they did, I could just stall until my starter hero was unkillable... Mainly due to stacking skills that were supposed to drain 60% of the max hp of all my allies... which would apply ONCE for like 20 spells reducing their health and was fine since abyss spells have revivals.)
Summary:
1. Make encounters more brutal?
2. Add more enemies and starter heroes? (They don't exactly have to be visually appealing as long as they are a different shape.)
3. Add multiple randomised variables like events or things that interrupt a campaign with life-threatening peril? Like a surprise random event of meeting a dragon thingy in either unavoidable yet obvious way so the player feels despair upon recognising they are screwed, or TRULY a surprise to traumatise the player slightly. (Souls-like games exist because people love a challenge right?)
4. Make things slightly more random? It's a general request that basically applies to everything, since characters consistently have the same few varying moves from rerolls, there are no dangerous difficulty spikes, and it's always clear that some skills are simply better than others. I would suggest
5. Add more overall danger? (Somewhat repetitive but more ways to counter strategies, especially since it's only player vs AI, and if I went all-in on the intended specialty of any region the counter-units are still pretty helpless.)
6. Nerf the abyss region.
7. Tweak the minion purchase system? After buying some initial creatures, I get all the high level ones in future runs... that makes the game way too easy and also predictable. (So it addresses difficulty and replayability and i'd suggest resetting the minion purchase-progress bar every run while tweaking prices to be even less favourable for stronger creatures, additionally increasing the price of those with high health.)
If you want more specific suggestions or clarifications let me know! I'm going off the top of my head
